Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (12 page)

“I can’t leave my station. My supervisor would kill me.” She took a handkerchief out of her skirt pocket and dabbed her eyes dry. “Come,” she said, picking up her sales book and Abby’s present and glancing nervously in all directions, “let’s go around the corner to the other side of the counter. It won’t be so crowded back there.”

She was right. The area around the corner—the girdle section—was practically deserted. I guess girdles haven’t yet made the stretch from secret stomach-cinchers to public stocking-stuffers.

“We can talk here,” the girl said, “but I’ll have to pretend that I’m showing you some merchandise in case my supervisor comes around.”

“Fine,” I said. “Show me anything you want.” To enhance my image as a serious shopper, I put my purse down on the counter and took out my checkbook. Then, when the girl bent over to get a stack of girdles out of the stock drawer, I unzipped the side pocket of my purse and took out the picture of Judy—the one that was taken in front of Walgreen’s, with the bearded weirdo and the weenie dog. I slipped the photo under my checkbook just as the salesgirl’s fluffy red head and despondent freckled face popped up above the counter again.

After she put her armful of girdles down on top of the display case, I reached over and touched her hand. “My name’s Phoebe Starr,” I told her, resurrecting the trusty pseudonym I’d used throughout the Comstock case. “What’s yours?”

“Vicki,” she said. “Vicki Lee Bumstead.” I smiled but I didn’t say a word. Far be it from
me
to point out the whimsy of other people’s funny names. Besides, Vicki’s name wasn’t funny in and of itself like mine. Only her surname was comical, and only because Dagwood (or, more precisely, the cartoonist Chic Young) had made it that way.

“I’m really sorry I made you cry, Vicki,” I said. “Were you a friend of Judy’s, too?”

“Yes,” she said, leaning against the counter and nodding so vigorously I thought she might shake something loose. “Judy was my best friend. The best friend I ever had. We worked here together, five days and two nights a week, for over a year. I miss her so much I can’t stand it.” She hugged her arms in close to her chest as though protecting herself from the cold. I felt so sorry for the girl I wanted to hug her myself.

“I know exactly how you feel,” I exclaimed. (You probably think I was lying, but I wasn’t.) “She was gone so suddenly, and so violently, it’s . . . well, it’s just so hard to accept . . . and impossible to understand.” I fought to keep myself from falling into my own deep well of loss and misery.

Vicki pulled herself together, too. “Phoebe Starr . . . Phoebe Starr . . . Phoebe Starr,” she suddenly repeated, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes, looking at me as if seeing me for the very first time. “Were you and Judy very close?” A visible seed of suspicion had taken root in the loamy depths of her mind. ”I’m only asking because Judy never mentioned your name to me—not even once. And it’s kind of funny that she never told me about you, because she always told me everything.”

“Well, to tell you the truth, Judy and I weren’t
that
close,” I blurted, trying to sidestep Vicki’s abrupt scrutiny. “It was my Aunt Elsie she was really close with. They lived right across the hall from each other.” For a person who truly hates to lie, I sure am good at it.

“Elsie Londergan is your aunt?” Vicki’s eyes were softening now, returning to their normally bulbous and luminous state. “Judy talked about
her
all the time. She loved her so much! She said Elsie was the mother she had always wished for.”

“My aunt feels the same way—as though she’s lost her only daughter.”

“Uh-oh!” Vicki said, suddenly shifting her gaze from my face to a point in the distance behind me. “My crabby supervisor’s headed this way. Act like you’re looking at the girdles.” She slid the stack of foundation garments under my nose and held the top one up for my inspection. “This is one of our bestselling models,” she said, raising her throaty voice to a loud, conspicuous frequency. “It features cotton elastic gores, a perforated rubber waist cinch, coiled wire boning, front clasps, back laces, and six adjustable garters.”

“Very nice,” I said, pretending interest. “Does it come in black?”

“Yes, I think so. Let me check.” Vicki dropped down behind the counter again and began a bogus search through the lowest stock drawers. “Keep an eye on my supervisor,” she whispered up to me, “and let me know when she’s gone.”

I turned around and surveyed the area behind me, trying to pick out Vicki’s boss—which was a pretty easy task since there were only two women walking through the department, and only one of them was coatless. She looked like the Wicked Witch of the West, and she was headed straight for the girdle counter. Before she got there, however, she made a sudden sharp turn and marched off toward the hosiery section, disappearing behind the band of Christmas carolers, who were now strolling down the crowded aisle, singing “Silent Night” at the top of their everloving lungs.

“Pssssst, Vicki. It’s safe to come up now.”

Vicki rose to her feet and looked around. “She’s gone?” “Long gone,” I said, sighing, hoping to ease the girl’s anxiety and get on with my investigation. “As I was saying...”

“Yes, I heard what you were saying,” Vicki whimpered. “Your aunt feels like she’s lost her only daughter. How horrible for her! Please tell her how sorry I am.” She looked as though she might start crying again.

“But that’s not all my aunt feels,” I went on, staring deep into Vicki’s big green eyes and using my most serious tone. “She feels certain that Judy’s murder was premeditated—that she was killed by somebody she knew.”

Vicki’s eyeballs virtually sprang out of their sockets. “But the paper said she was shot during a . . .”

“ . . . burglary,” I said, finishing her sentence for her. “That’s what the police decided—and that’s the story they’re sticking to. But Aunt Elsie doesn’t agree with them at all. She’s convinced that Judy’s murder was committed intentionally. ”

“Oh, my God!” Vicki cried. “How could that be? Who would want to kill Judy?”

“I was hoping
you
might have some ideas on that subject. Aunt Elsie and I are trying to dig up some new leads, looking for something—
anything
—to persuade the police to reopen the case.”

“But I don’t know anything about it!” she screeched. “I can’t even believe it’s true!”

“Yes, but there’s a good chance it
is
true,” I said. “And since Judy always told you everything, you probably know more about it than you think. For instance, have you ever seen this picture before?” I slipped the snapshot out from under my checkbook and handed it to Vicki. “Do you know the name of the man in the photo?”

Vicki gaped at the picture for a second or two, then handed it back to me. “Yes, I do!” she proudly announced. “That’s Jimmy. Jimmy Burgerham, or Hamburger, or—oh, I can’t remember his last name! He was Judy’s boyfriend for a while. The dog’s name is Otto. He’s a miniature dachshund and Jimmy takes him everywhere. He brought Otto up here once, hidden in a shopping bag, just to get a laugh out of Judy. She adored that dog.”

“More than she adored Jimmy?”

“No! She was crazy about Jimmy, too . . . Hey, what’re you driving at? If you think Jimmy killed Judy, you’ve got another think coming. He really liked her, and it really tore him up when she stopped seeing him. He told me so himself.”

“
She
stopped seeing him?” This didn’t sound like the Judy Catcher I had come to know and love.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t because she didn’t dig him anymore. It was because he had so many other girlfriends besides her. One or two would have been okay, but Jimmy is addicted to women—especially
new
women—and Judy just couldn’t stand being crazy jealous all the time. Jimmy never had enough time for her. She broke up with him to keep herself from breaking down.”

“Do you have Jimmy’s address or phone number? I’d like to talk to him.”

“He lives down in the Village somewhere, but I don’t know which street. I don’t have his phone number either. You could probably find him at the Village Vanguard, though. That really cool jazz place down on Seventh Avenue? Judy said he goes there almost every night and sits at the bar sipping beer, flirting with the chicks, just waiting for the chance to get up on stage and read his poetry.”

“He writes poems?”

“Yeah. He’s pretty good, too. At least that’s what Judy said. I wouldn’t know. I read mysteries, not poetry.”

A girl after my own heart.

“Aunt Elsie said Judy was involved with another man right before her death,” I said. “An older man named Gregory Smith. Do you know anything about him?”

“Oh, sure. He was the greatest love of Judy’s life! She said he was her lord and savior. But what he was, really, was her substitute father—she always called him Daddy-o. Or sometimes just plain Daddy. He was . . . oh, no! Here comes my supervisor again! Please put that picture away before she sees it. If she catches on we’ve been having a personal conversation, she’ll demote me to Accessories, and it’s pure hell to work down there during the holidays.” She folded a flap of tissue paper over Abby’s present and put the top on the box. “That’ll be seven eighty-five, plus twenty-four cents tax, for a total of eight dollars and nine cents,” she said in a booming voice. “Please make the check payable to Macy’s.” She gave me a big salesgirl smile and handed me a ballpoint pen.

I stuffed the photo back inside my purse and made out the check. “Thank you so much for your help,” I bellowed. “My friend is going to love this gift.” Then I lowered my voice and murmured, “I need to ask you some more questions, Vicki. What time do you get off work? Can we meet somewhere to talk?”

“Okay,” she whispered. “But I don’t get off till nine.”

I flipped a coin in my brain. Heads, I would stay to meet Vicki. Tails, I’d go home to meet Dan. It came up tails. Like I said, sometimes I’m lucky.

“Sorry, Vicki, I can’t wait till then. I have a previous engagement. But maybe you’ll give me your phone number, so I can call you later?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess that would be all right,” she said, looking kind of confused. “It’s Gramercy 4-2244.” She wrote the number down on the back of my sales slip. “But make sure you call me before eleven or my mother will have a conniption.”

“Before eleven,” I said, nodding agreement. I gathered up all my stuff and put on my gloves. “Thanks again for your help.”

Giving Vicki a quick but significant salute, I turned and sprinted for the elevator. The perky carolers had launched into yet another Yuletide favorite, and I wanted to get out of there—fast. Instead of chestnuts roasting on an open fire, I was hot to have Jack Frost (okay,
Dan Street
) take a nip at my nose.

Chapter 9

DID YOU EVER HAVE THE FEELING THAT your life has a life all its own; that the most momentous occurrences of your pitiful earthly existence actually have very little—if anything—to do with you? Well, that’s the way it was for me that night, at thirty minutes after eight, on December 21, 1954, when I lugged my cold and hungry body up the stairs to the landing outside my apartment and started fumbling through my keys, looking for the one that would allow me to open my thoroughly inviting—but securely locked—front door.

All I wanted to do was go inside, check to see that the diamonds were still there, cram a few crackers in my mouth, guzzle a cup of hot cocoa, smoke a cigarette or two, fix my makeup, spritz on some Shalimar, and relax for a minute before Dan arrived. Not so much to ask for, right?

I’d have done better to ask for the moon.

Before I could even fit my key in the lock, Abby’s door banged open and she swooped like a vampire into the hall, the wide sleeves of her white painter’s smock flapping like the wings of an albino bat. “Where the holy hell have you been?” she shrieked, grabbing hold of my shoulder and pulling me around to face her. “You’re so late the Mai Tais are all gone! Now I’ll have to fix you a plain old rum and Coke!” Her bright red lips were pouting, her dark brown eyes were blazing, and her long black hair was loose and swirling around her head like a storm cloud.

I was unnerved by her troubled demeanor. “What’s the matter, Abby? There’s no reason for you to be so upset. It’s too cold for Mai Tais anyway. This is hot toddy weather.”

“That’s not the point!” she screeched, stamping one fuzzy pink slipper-clad foot on the bare wood floor of the landing. “The point is why are you so late? Where the hell have you been? We’ve both been going
meshugge
. We were
worried
about you!”

“We?” I said. “Who is
we?
Did Dan get here already, or is Tony the baker still here from last night, charming your pants off with his trick snake?”

“Hardeeharhar,” Abby said, relaxing her shoulders a bit, but refusing to smile. “You’re wrong on both counts. And I wouldn’t be making jokes if I were you. There’s nothing funny about murder.”